The other day I got asked a question: “How resilient are you?”. The question was asked to me in a friendly environment, but it made me really start thinking. Why should anyone be asked to be resilient in the modern business environment? How can it even be an option to be resilient? Why should it be a trait to be resilient? Nothing in life should be about being resilient and nothing, I repeat nothing, in business should be so. Business, just as life, should be about adapting to the changing environment to produce the best possible output. Regardless if that output is happiness or steaming cash!

Business shall be about making money. Nothing more, nothing less. You can decide if you want to make that money in a decent manner or if you want to make that money in a dirty manner. That is completely up to you as an entrepreneur. The bottom line however is that you try to create the best product there is, with the buying consumer in mind. You aim to get the highest possible revenue out of some sort of input. That’s business.

If your customers buy expensive cause it blings, then you should make things that bling. If your customers buy stuff cause they think you have the most fair way of producing a good, then you should make it such. All in all, you should focus on what your customer really want and then try to make the highest possible turnover from that desire.

So far, everyone agrees with me. I hope. But why is it then seen as a trait that you are resilient as an employee? Customers aren’t! “Oh, we’re sorry you weren’t satisfied with our product this time either. Stick around a while longer and we’ll make sure to perhaps meet some of your expectations in the future. Remember, not all of them, but some of them.”

One time, yes perhaps, but to say that this is something that the customer should get used to?? No way. You would never say that, and you would never want that to be the case. Cause you would know that your customer would vote with his or her feet and go to a competitor that would be able to offer her or him that good.

So why is it that we. The young people striving for change, should have to wait around for better times?  We shouldn’t! To quote Obama; “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” That’s change for you. If we don’t move in the pace of our customers, then the customers will always look away from us for a better alternative.

When it comes to the web, this is even more so the case. The total transparency between promise and fulfillment becomes extremely powerful in an environment where everyone has the production capabilities to make oneself heard, and anyone can tell a story interesting enough for loads of people to listen.

We do not know what the world will look like tomorrow and we cannot look into the future. What we do know is that it will be different than today. If we apply what we did yesterday, to the imagination of today, we still don’t reach there. We do not know. The only way to change tomorrow is to learn from yesterday, use all that is in our power today and take lead to realize our dreams for tomorrow. We need to dream, and it’s the dreams that should guide us rather than what is plausible right now. If you can think it, then you can do it. Especially when looking at it from a technology perspective.

If you lead, you will be a lot more uncomfortable than if you follow, but you will always be inline with what is now. Leading, is also taking a risk. What if people do not follow? Well that is really no risk at all, cause if you do really dream, and you utilize what is out there for you to utilize right now, and if you’ll listen to your customers whilst leading, then you will be able to change direction before it is too late. If you choose to follow, then you will always be one step away from being obsolete. Someone else will lead your customers away from you.

Now people often ask me about what ROI you can expect from using Social Media. I have been fortunate enough to learn a lot of ways to calculate this, and I don’t blame them for asking. However, the big question is what kind of return you as a company want. Either you want the same returns as you’ve always had, and thus you do the same thing, but in an online format. Or, you realize that you do have a great chance to take the lead and increase the rate at which your return builds in your pockets.

It is really up to us to decide where we want to take the present and how we want to lead into the future.

Had some fun cutting down some clips I found on YouTube tonight. As I was playing around I thought of an idea to actually try to break down what differs companies that make money and the ones that do not make money from social media. This first episode deals with the fact that you have to set up goals that are connected with your business strategy and overall business goals as well as measure how you’re moving towards these goals with the help of Social Media KPIs.

Please comment for improvements!

//Jesper

Picture taken from another speach I made at Göteborg University to a bunch of professors.

I held a talk on social media perspectives on the 15th of April. The audience consisted of a group of web analysts engaged in the network Web analytics wednesday. Below is the presentation that I shared with them. (Now translated into English)

Three main voices of Social Media Debate
Basically my theory is that there are three major voices in the social media debate right now. There are the evangelists, the marketers and then a group I would like to call Dr Data. This presentation tries to tell the story of how these three groups communicate what social media is, what is its value and also how it should be measured.

Not really perfect
It is in no way a perfect presentation, and it is kind of plain in its format. But my main point is that there is too much pullet proof lines between the three groups right now. We need to co-operate with eachother in order to build a sustainable web for the future. Only then will we be able to really increase the values of our business online.

Let’s make loads of money
For you sensitive viewers out there… be adviced. I strongly argue that all activities a company does in social media should be aimed towards making money out of it. View this presentation as bullets. One perspective on three perspectives.

I know there are some parts of this presentation that needs explanation. Please make comments below and I’ll try my best to explain.

If you are looking to convert through social media, you have to recognize that it is a completely different task than converting traffic from a search engine.

In this post I will quickly run through two situations where the mindset of a person will enable you to make a sale through social media.

• The must have buy
• The viral buy

The mindset
First of all you have to take the mindset of people engaged in social media into consideration. Imagine the off line activity when you sit with your loved one in a restaurant and all of a sudden one of those flower guys shows up to harrass you.

In any circumstance other than this one you would probably flick him off and hope he/she goes to hell for intruding with a sales proposal whilst you are trying to engage in some quality time with your babe. However, you see your loved ones face, how desparately he/she wants a flower, whether or not he/she admits it, and so you have to bow to the intrusion and buy a flower. (Don’t try to tell me that you buy flowers cause you want to…)

Secondly, imagine if the flower sales man would come up to you, but instead try to sell you a car. Even though your loved ones desparate eyes might have some effect upon you, I am sure most of the worlds population would be able to resist.

The must have buy
The example above illustrates one of the strongest driving forces behind a buy in social media. The “have to” buy is the best situation you can find yourself in as a marketer. Many social networks have been successful in launching “have to” buys through introducing artificial value artifacts such as icons that you can buy to another person to show them that you like them. Generally these gifts are placed on your profile page of the social network and thus shows your status amongst friends.

Thus, when ever you can find a situation where your potential consumers can earn status from buying your product, you should try to use this in your marketing technique.

The viral buy
Another way of successfully working with marketing through social media is to work with “word-of-mouth” or viral marketing. Taking the example of the loved one again. Imagine if you are currently choosing between two different car models and your loved one says she perfer the one or the other. This will make you more likely to buy the car. Also, if your best friend recommends it, or if some kind of expert recommends it, it is not that drastic to assume that you will buy the car.

Now, there are two VERY important pieces of information in the pharagraph above. Firstly, the person you will be able to sell a car to through social media will have to be in a choice situation. Secondly, the recommendation has to come from a trusted source.

In this post I will not go through how to find people who are in a choice situation or how you become a trusted source, but I will cover this in later posts.